CHAPTER ONE
1901
PROVENCE, FRANCE
CHÂTEAU CLEMENT
Josephine Clement
No one has seen.
The château’s usual ranks of gardeners and servants, grape pickers and kitchen staff, have been joined by Monsieur Bayol’s crew of men hammering, sawing, sanding, and painting the newly arrived carousel. The cats, dogs, pigs, and rabbits were carved, painted, and gilded in Bayol’s factory in Angers, but it has taken nine men to transport the pieces by rail, then by steam traction engine from the station to the château, and then to assemble the machine on-site. It will take another two weeks, perhaps a month, to complete the elaborately decorated salon that will house the carousel.
Josephine wishes it would take longer. She would be happy if they stayed forever. Especially the carver’s apprentice.
She and the apprentice have placed confidence in each other; they will keep each other’s confidences.
Josephine knows her neighbors think of her as secretive and scheming because she was not born here. She comes from faraway Bretagne, and yet she stole the heart of their local favorite, the eligible Yves Paul Clement, heir to Château Clement. Bretagne and Provence weremeant to be part of France now, but deep-seated regional stereotypes and allegiances do not respect random borders.
She understands. After all, before Yves brought her to Château Clement as a young bride, Josephine had always believed the Provençal people to be lazy, unfriendly, and afflicted with a harsh accent.
She has found the accent and unfriendliness to be apt, but though her husband is accustomed to taking asiesteevery afternoon, he is anything but lazy. Yves rises early to capture the light of dawn on his camera; he works late into the night in his darkroom. He is an educated gentleman: He reads in his library, he composes poetry, he draws. Unlike most in the region, he does not hunt. Instead, he observes and makes note of the birds that perch on the limbs of the plane trees and olive orchards: the short-toed lark and tawny pipit in spring, the red-crested pochard and moustached warbler in fall.
Yves’s keen eyes observe the forest creatures, the turning of the leaves, the changing quality of the light throughout the day, throughout the seasons. By virtue of the incessant clicking of his cameras, he records the world around him.
And yet, he does not see.
CHAPTER TWO
PRESENT DAY
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA
Cady Anne Drake
Cady had never realized how many empty platitudes people voiced when confronted with grief, how they felt compelled to say something, to sayanything, in response to a situation that had no answer, no response. No solution.
In point of brutal fact, there was nothing to say. Maxine had died.
One moment she was there, Cady’s ever-present rock in the shifting sands of life. And the next she had fallen to the floor behind the register, struck down by a sudden heart attack. Maxine had disappeared into the ether, just like that, along with her snarky comments and wise eyes and calm, slightly haughty demeanor that never failed to assuage Cady’s inner demons. She was gone. No one else in this life would be lucky enough to know Maxine Caroline Clark.
All that remained of the old woman was her shop, called Maxine’s Treasures, its junky (or artsy, depending on your perspective) inventory, and the back room, where Cady had set up her photography studio and darkroom. Even though Cady had no intention of taking over and managing Maxine’s antiques store, she wasn’t ready to give up her studio. Not to mention that she’d been living in the back room of theshop—which was not strictly legal—since she’d lost her relatively affordable apartment to a condo development several months ago.
What now? Where would she go? What would she do?
Maxine was family. She was all Cady had.
A desperate, breathless weariness reached out its icy fingers to grip Cady’s bones. And it wasn’t the strain of carrying her wooden carousel figure, Gus. She saw reproach in the rabbit’s glass eyes as she maneuvered him into the shop; could this last shred of hope gone be her comeuppance for having tried to sell him?
Maxine had given Gus to her ten years ago, on Cady’s wedding day. The marriage hadn’t lasted long, and the only thing Cady took from it—besides bitter experience—was Gus-the-rabbit.
It was embarrassing to admit, but Gus had always made her feel... loved.
According to Maxine, Gus was a genuine piece of carousel history, hand-carved by the famous French sculptor Gustave Bayol. Which would have meant he was worth thousands—maybetensof thousands. But this morning Cady’s last-ditch financial dreams had been dashed by an earnest young man named Scott Ripley. Peering through a huge magnifying glass, theAntiqueForum’s acknowledged expert in nineteenth- and twentieth-century European carvings had examined the rabbit’s loosening joints, noting how the bands of basswood had pulled away from one another at the tops of the legs, and the gap where the neck section met the body. Carousel figures are hollow, built like boxes with slats of wood joined, laminated, then carved, and primed to conceal the joints. Not only were the sections falling apart—Gus’s ears were now barely connected to his slightly tilted head—but the bright paint and gold gilding were flaking off, with gesso primer showing through in patches.
At long last Ripley had straightened, shrugged, and pronounced: “It’s not a Bayol.”
“You’re wrong,” Cady said. “Look again.”
